Headstones at Lakeland Center a Reminder of City's Early History

If you visit The Lakeland Center this weekend to do a little ice skating or to watch the Raleigh Ringers' handbell concert, you might pause a moment to reflect on Viola Wrenn.

By GARY WHITE THE LEDGER

If you visit The Lakeland Center this weekend to do a little ice skating or to watch the Raleigh Ringers' handbell concert, you might pause a moment to reflect on Viola Wrenn.We don't know much about Viola, except that she married a man named J.D. Wrenn and she died Jan. 24, 1910. She was just 18.Viola is one of three early residents of Lakeland whose grave markers are displayed on the property of The Lakeland Center. The headstones are remnants of a cemetery that occupied part of the property in the early 20th century.The trio of headstones are easy to miss, especially if you don't use the southwest entrance to the venue. Once you become aware of them, though, it's hard to believe you hadn't noticed them before. The monuments are clearly visible from Lime Street, which passes along the south boundary of The Lakeland Center, the city-owned entertainment venue that opened in 1974.The markers are the last reminders of Stephenson Cemetery, a small, privately owned burial ground, said Kay Stone, first vice president of the Imperial Polk Genealogical Society. Stone and other members of the society have worked for years to produce a survey of Polk County's cemeteries.Wrenn's and another headstone rest atop a low marble burial vault. The inscription on Wrenn's marker announces that she was born May 11, 1891. Some lines of elegiac verse, no doubt supplied by her widower, are carved in small writing toward the base of the tablet, though time has rendered them mostly indistinct. A few words can be made out: "Oh Viola ... And I will ..."A few feet away, a heavily stained marbled headstone memorializes Frank M. Flaville, who lived considerably longer. As the inscription reports, Flaville was born June 27, 1861, in Chester, Pa., and died May 25, 1915, in Bartow. Chiseled lettering on the slanted top of the headstone identifies him as "MY HUSBAND."The nameless widow presumably supplied the verse found below Flaville's name and dates. It reads, "Twilight and evening star / And one last call for me."The third grave marker is about 50 feet to the east, nearer the massive, curved sculpture known as "Infinity." The headstone, set atop a stone slab, pays tribute to Lovick F. Platt, who lived from March 4, 1884 to Dec. 21, 1909.An inscription laments: "Just as the morning of this life was opening into day, His young and lovely spirit passed from earth and grief away."The Lakeland Center occupies 35 acres that had been a residential area since the late 1800s, according to the venue's official history. The predominantly black Moorehead community was established in the area in the 1880s, and the city acquired and razed the neighborhood in the early 1970s in preparation for building what was originally called the Lakeland Civic Center.A city plaque erected a decade ago near the main entrance commemorates the Moorehead community. (Spellings of the name have varied over the years; "Morehead" and "Moorhead" turn up in some documents.)The three headstones, though, memorialize white residents, said local historian LaFrancine Burton, who was born in Moorehead and has documented its history. She said whites originally lived on the southern edge of what is now The Lakeland Center property, near Lime Street, though most of them had moved elsewhere long before The Lakeland Center was planned.Stephenson Cemetery held the remains of white residents, Burton said. The private burial ground apparently had not been maintained for decades when the city acquired the property, she said.Stone, the genealogist, concurred. She said family members from such early white settlers as the Stephensons, Boswells and Scotts were buried in Stephenson Cemetery.Stone said she recalls walking through the area as a child and seeing remnants of the cemetery beneath the raised wooden houses of black residents."You could see the headstones," she said. "I remember that very vividly from back in the 1940s. Nobody really looked at them."Stone said some graves were moved to other cemeteries before the construction of The Lakeland Center.She found records for one such move. The remains of Dr. Francis Brooks, who died in 1903, were transferred from Stephenson to Roselawn Cemetery in 1939, she said.A survey conducted in 1970 found four burial vaults on the property's southern boundary and two on the northern boundary, Stone said, but no remains.Lakeland's parks and recreation department now has the responsibility of maintaining the markers.While one might expect the ancient monuments to generate curiosity, Mike LaPan, executive director of The Lakeland Center, said questions about the headstones are quite rare.LaPan said that's probably because the markers seem to blend in with the stone monuments of nearby Veterans Memorial Park.

[ Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Join his discussion of books at www.facebook.com/ledgerlit. ]

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